


Now Exhale

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: What You Leave Behind [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Feel-good, Fluff, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Coital Cuddling, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 10:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6420247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all they've seen, all the years of waiting, peace hardly seems real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Exhale

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by lemonsharks on tumblr, "in a blissful sigh as you fall asleep", so I wrote shameless feel-good fic for the heck of it.
> 
> Set post-Inquisition, about 9:42-43

When Bryn caught her breath again, the room had fallen to complete darkness. The stars were dimmed by the lights of Denerim, the moons were dark or hadn’t risen yet, and the fire had gone out at least an hour before, when neither she nor Alistair had the presence of mind to tend it. 

As if by instinct, her small fingers traced the line of an old scar that crossed his collarbone into the reddish hair that covered his chest, reassuring herself that he was real, or that she was.

Judging by the soft snore of breath puffing next to her ear, Alistair was real, and thoroughly asleep. Bryn closed her eyes and gently pushed herself up, wincing at the ache between her thighs. She felt limp, but she was just about to swing her leg over and curl into the warm crook Alistair made for her when they slept together when she felt him stir. The arm that had been rested loosely over her waist was now tightening its hold on her.

“You’re not leaving that quickly, Warden,” mumbled Alistair, somewhere beneath the black curtain of her hair. “King’s command and all that. I’ve got years to make up for, and if you think that I’m anywhere near finished with you--”

“Shh,” Bryn urged, unable to stifle a quiet giggle when Alistair cracked one eye up at her. She stretched her stiffening muscles and pulled one of the furs over the both of them before adding, “I’m a little saddlesore.”

“Ah,” Alistair sighed, his eye blinking closed again, a blissful, languid expression the only hint he was still awake. That, she supposed, and his enormous hand on her ass. “It’s for the best that we take a break. No magical regeneration from the Taint, and we’re getting older, I suppose.” 

Bryn laughed then, rubbing her nose into his shoulder. When she lifted her face, he was waiting for her to make the first move. Sometime in the ten years -- twelve? Ancestors only know how long it had been. 

“You’ve only just reached thirty, Your Majesty,” she tried, her mouth searching for his in the dark. 

“So have you, Princess.” 

Quite against her will, and seemingly in defiance of the her present, boneless state, a spike of heat crackled in her belly when Alistair kissed her, his thumb tracing the long edge of her jaw up toward her ear, her temple, and back down. Bryn felt warmer, more whole and cherished than she had in years. She whimpered quietly, cupping one hand at the back of his neck and parting her mouth for him. 

“Maybe then,” he gasped moments later between stolen breaths, “we aren’t as old as we thought?”


End file.
